Discourse

Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p.
Final version
Discourse stance Ruth Berman,a Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdttir,b and Sven Strmqvistc

a
Tel Aviv University / bIceland University of Education / cLund University
In press, Written Language and Literacy 5,2 2002. ( R. A. Berman, H. Ragnarsdttir,

and Literacy, &olume ', % ( !. !tr"m#$ist. %00%. Discourse stance. Written Languages
The aim of this article is to integrate findings reported in the preceding articles in this collection, employing a global discourse perspective labeled DISCOURSE STANCE. The paper attempts to clarify what is meant by this notion, and how it can contribute to the evaluation of text construction along the major variables of our project: target Language (Dutch, English, French etc.), Age (developmental level and schooling), Modality (writing vs. speech), and Genre (personal experience narratives vs. expository discussion). We propose a general conceptual framework for characterizing discourse stance as a basis for an empirically testable potential model of this key aspect of text construction and discourse analysis. Unlike the cross-linguistically data-based studies reported in the rest of this collection, which involve quantitative as well as well as qualitative analyses, this concluding article presents selected pieces of text from our sample to serve as case studies that illustrate our general line of reasoning, rather than to test specific hypotheses.
1. Introduction The term STANCE has been used in the discourse literature in different ways. For example, Biber & Finegan (1989) define stance as the lexical and grammatical expression of attitudes, feelings, judgements, or commitment concerning the propositional content of a message(1989:124) to include adverbs, verbs, and adjectives which mark affect, certainty, doubt, hedges, emphasis, possibility, necessity, and prediction. Ochs 1990, 1996 specifies stance as one of four dimensions that she discusses in considering the relation between language and culture. She defines stance as a socially recognized disposition, distinguishing EPISTEMIC STANCE, a
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socially recognized way of knowing a proposition, such as direct (experiential) and indirect (e.g., secondhand) knowledge, degrees of certainty and specificity, vs. AFFECTIVE STANCE, a socially recognized feeling, attitude, mood, or degree of emotional intensity (1990:2). These studies derive from quite different perspectives: Biber and his associates (cf. Biber 1995, Biber et al. 1998) analyze recorded written and spoken texts, in terms of the statistical distribution of different clusters of linguistic markers, as expressing a particular stance style. These researchers deliberately proceed from analysis of linguistic forms,1 with no a-priori relationship to a particular discourse context or communicative setting. In contrast, Ochs and her associates (e.g. Ochs & Schieffelin 1983) proceed from the communicative context of situation to analysis of linguistic forms occurring in different socio-cultural settings. They focus on conversational interaction, and advocate an ethnographic methodology to assess how children acquire the ability to use language constitutively, on the assumption that epistemic and affective stance has an especially privileged role in the constitution of social life (Ochs 1996: 420). The framework for analysing discourse stance which we propose below is parasitic on the above research, and on a large body of other literature that ranges across literary studies (e.g. Bakhtin 1986, Leech & Short 1981); sociolinguistic analyses of narrative and conversational interactions (Labov 1972, Tannen 1989); psycholinguistic research on conversational usage (Clark 1986, Clark & Gerrig 1990); studies focused on the comparison of written vs. spoken discourse (Tannen 1982, Chafe 1994); and research on childrens developing discourse abilities (Shatz 1985, Reilly 1992). Relevant notions that have been alluded to in the literature include the following (in roughly chronological order).
(a) Evaluation. This critical notion in studies of narrative discourse, since the pioneering work of Labov & Waletzky 1967, refers to those elements of a narration which flesh out the sequentially ordered events that it describes (in a presumably objective, descriptive fashion) by providing the narrators personal commentary on those events, and subjective interpretation of them, and so renders a story more expressive and interesting to the listener.2
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(b) Involvement. Chafe 1982 and Tannen 1985 use this term to characterize the interactive features of texts. Tannen points out, importantly from our viewpoint, that involvement need not be confined to prototypically interactive situations of face-to-face conversation, or even to narrative type texts. She refers instead to the relative focus of involvement, noting that literary language, like ordinary conversation, is dependent for its effect on interpersonal involvement. It fosters and builds on involvement between speaker and hearer rather than focusing on information or message. It also depends for its impact on the emotional involvement of the hearer. In contrast, expository prose, associated with literate tradition depends for its impact on impressing the audience with the strength and completeness of its argument, that is, with aspects of the lexicalized message (Tannen 1985:13940). (c) Perspective. Our view of discourse stance also interacts with the notion of perspective although, again, the two are not the same. The term perspective is used in linguistic analysis primarily in discussion of grammatical aspect, as in the distinction made by Smith 1991 of situation-type aspect (or [space] Aktionsarten) vs. viewpoint aspect (cf. Goldsmith & Woisetschlaeger 1982). In developmental studies of discourse analysis, perspective has been considered largely in terms of agentivity,, with grammatical VOICE a major distinguishing feature of different perspectives on a situation (Budwig 1990, Berman 1993, Berman & Slobin 1994:51538). This is shown in our analysis contrasting the use of passive voice in several languages (Jisa et al. 2002). Others talk about POINT OF VIEW, which Brown & Yule (1983:146 48) relate to topic ordering in narratives. Relatedly, Li & Zubin 1995 assume that choice of an anaphoric referring expression full NP, pronoun, or zero might be a function of contextdependent cognitive factors, in distinguishing linear from rhetorical continuity, as well as in the two perspectives of expressive vs. reportive framing in narrative discourse. These and related ideas are perhaps most broadly articulated by Chafe (1994:132), in terms of point of view and of immediacy vs. displacement, taking as a starting point the fact that consciousness is oriented from the point of view of an experiencing self. (d) Distancing devices. In work which formed the background to the present analysis, we considered the nature of such dev ices, in the sense of linguistic means used to express a
particular discourse stance along a range of distinctions including personal(ized) vs. general(ized), immediate vs. detached, involved vs. distanced, specific vs. general, and subjective vs. objective (Berman 1999, Jisa & Vigu 1999, Ravid & Cahana-Amitay 1999, Tolchinsky 1999). The present study attempts to refine and clarify these distinctions in a more principled frame of reference (2), as background to specification of the linguistic devices which serve the over-all purpose of expressing discourse stance (3).
Our proposal aims at a top-down approach to the analysis of discourse stance, at the same time specifying the forms of linguistic expression which speaker/writers use in realizing this aspect of text construction. We start by trying to define the functional parameters involved in this notion (2) and then examine the linguistic forms which speaker/writers deploy in expressing stance (34). In this bidimensional approach to form/function relations, we are aided by the methodology evolved for data collection and analysis, as laid out in Berman & Verhoeven 2002 (1). Our sample provided us (uniquely in the research literature, to the best of our knowledge) with directly comparable texts dealing with shared thematic content in narrative vs. expository discourse, in both speech and writing, across four different age groups. The fact that exactly parallel procedures were adopted across different languages means that we can directly address the impact of available structural devices and of rhetorical preferences in a given target language a recurrent theme in the preceding articles of this collection. Our characterization of discourse stance thus takes into account two genres of monologic texts (for comparisons of narrative with other modes of discourse, see Bruner 1986, Giora 1990, Stutterheim & Klein 1999), both written and spoken, in developmental perspective. Our major motivation is to examine the complex interaction between linguistic forms and discourse functions by considering a broad array of linguistic devices as giving expression to several different dimensions of discourse stance. In the present context, we aim to provide a functionally based overview that integrates topics discussed elsewhere in this collection, including the lexicon, noun-slots, verb-slots, voice, and propositional attitudes.
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2. Conceptual framework We consider the notion discourse stance as referring to three interrelated dimensions of textconstruction: ORIENTATION (Sender, Text, Recipient); ATTITUDE (Epistemic, Deontic, Affective); and GENERALITY (of reference and quantification specific vs. general). These are functional dimensions which apply across texts, and so differ from what we term Propositional Attitudes, whose scope is the (semantic) proposition or something like a (syntactic) sentence (see Reilly et al. 2000).3 Central to our present proposal is the idea that all or any of these three dimensions of stance -- orientation, attitude, and referential specificity or generality -- can be alternated within a piece of discourse. A given text, may start out with a sender orientation as a deictic center, and then switch to taking the text or even the recipient-addressee as a point of reference and then either return to the speaker/writer perspective or not. Similarly, a single text may contain any one or more of the three types of attitudes we are identifying epistemic, deontic, and affective and it may be both specific and general in reference to persons, places, and times.
2.1 Orientation This dimension concerns the relation between the three participating elements in text production and interpretation: sender (speaker or writer), text (narration or exposition), and recipient (hearer or reader). A SENDER ORIENTATION is subjective, and is deictically centered on the speaker/writer. It tends to be deontically judgemental or affective in attitude, and specific in reference; it reflects personal involvement in the content of the text, relating to events and ideas that the speaker/writer has experienced or thought about. These distinctions are always relative; e.g., expressions like I think, je trouve, creo contain an epistemic predicate, yet they proceed from a deictic, sender-oriented viewpoint. A RECIPIENT ORIENTATION is communicatively motivated; it takes into account, or at least appears to be addressing, the hearer/reader quite directly. This is found in expressions like you know, or use of 2nd person pronouns in a nonpersonal sense, with generic reference (Spanish tu arbitrario). Thus, when an Englishspeaking woman in the course of an oral narrative makes a generalization to the effect that
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people who you know they take advantage of your trust, this might be construed as more recipient-oriented than the semantically corresponding people that are known to / who clearly take advantage of ones / a persons trust).4 A TEXT ORIENTATION takes the object that is being produced orally or in writing as a conceptual or cognitive point of reference. It relates the representation of the content of the piece of discourse itself (cf. Im not quite sure how to formulate the problem, or What Im going to talk (or write) about is ) to a totally distanced, impersonal metatextual level of orientation, e.g. When discussing issues such as this , or In considering the topic of In our database, expressions like the latter are confined to the older subjects, mainly among university graduate adults, occasionally in the texts of high-school adolescents.
2.2. Attitude Distinctions of attitude also apply at the more local level of propositional attitudes (Reilly et al. 2000). But as has been noted, e.g. by Ochs 1996, such distinctions express a quite general discourse stance as well. An EPISTEMIC attitude concerns a relation between a cognising speaker/writer and a proposition, in terms of possibility, certainty, or the evidence for the individuals belief that a given state of affairs is true (or false). A DEONTIC attitude adopts a judgemental, prescriptive, or evaluative viewpoint in relation to the topic. An AFFECTIVE attitude, in contrast to the epistemic, concerns a relation between cognising speaker/writer and their emotions (desire, anger, grief etc.) with respect to a given state of affairs.5 These distinctions can thus be ranged on a cline from the more objective, abstract, and universalistic epistemic attitudes; through socially conditioned deontic attitudes, shared within a group familiar to the speaker/writer; and on to the most subjective reactions and personal feelings that an individual holds in relation to a given topic. Psychological studies on socio-cognitive and moral development (e.g. Hersh et al. 1979), as well as the findings from discourse analysis in our own sample (Berman & Verhoeven 2002, 4.1), indicate that the ability to combine and interrelate these different attitudes flexibly and appropriately, in a single discourse context, is the hallmark of a socially developed adolescent/adult.
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2.3 Generality This dimension concerns the degree of generalization vs. specificity of reference to people, places, and times referred to in the text. To a large extent, this is a function of, or parasitic on, the two previous dimensions, since speaker orientation is necessarily highly specific, while cognitive attitudes may be quite general and universalistic in scope. We distinguish three levels of expression in this respect: Personal or SPECIFIC in Reference (e.g. I / my parents think, my / this boys father made me / him apologize); GENERIC (e.g. People / We tend to think, It depends on your / ones attitude); and IMPERSONAL (Its well known, the fact that, Spanish se sabe, French il faut). As the examples indicate, the linguistic means for expressing these different levels of generality depend on the available devices and typological properties of the different languages. But distinctions in generality of reference, as in orientation and attitude, are assumed to be relevant regardless of the particular target language. This three-pronged approach to discourse stance represents a deliberate attempt to view language use and discourse rhetoric along clines of interacting factors, rather than in dichotomous terms of written vs. spoken, personalized vs. objective, or involved vs. distanced. This over-all conception is supported by our analysis of developing text construction abilities, which aims at integrating top-down and bottom-up approaches to discourse analysis, from the perspective of a multiplicity of linguistic forms that can be recruited to express a range of discourse functions. It is facilitated by the database at our disposal, which allows us to do a careful examination of comparable, specially elicited texts produced by non-expert subjects in different languages, at four levels of Age (and schooling), in two Genres (narrative and expository), and in two Modalities (speech and writing).
3. Linguistic forms of expression Under this heading, we move from function (the notion of discourse stance) to form, in the sense of overt linguistic markings of stance morphological, syntactic, and lexical. The breakdown in Table 1 was devised in the framework of a panel presentation concerned with
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Talking and writing about conflict situations at different ages and in different languages (Berman 1999). Table 1 near here Papers presented at the panel (Ravid & Cahana-Amitay 1999 for Hebrew, Jisa & Vigui 1999 for French, and Tolchinsky 1999 for Spanish) focused on the linguistic forms used to distinguish the direct, immediate, and highly personalized perspective of personal-experience narratives from the more distanced, abstract, and impersonal rhetoric of expository discourse. This analysis was based on a contrast we drew between these two types of texts, working with a database collected at a prior stage of the study reported on in here. In our current thinking about discourse stance, as formulated in the preceding section, we have abandoned this rather dichtomous view to take account of the complex nature of the topic as well as the form and content of the texts that we have analyzed. Nonetheless, there are good grounds, psychological and linguistic as well as developmental, for setting narrative apart from other discourse genres (as cogently argued by Bruner 1986, von Stutterheim & Klein 1989). This is particularly true in the case of personal experience narratives, as compared with discussions of a topic such as we elicited (Berman 2001b). For example, across age groups and languages, the dominant tense in the expository texts is the (timeless) present, as compared with a preference for past tense forms in the narratives (Ragnarsdttir et al. 2002). Across Age and Language, nominals functioning as surface subjects tend to be more generic, impersonal, and/or lexical in expository texts, with a higher proportion of personal pronoun subjects in narratives (Ravid et al. 2002). Again across Age and Language, expository texts contain more modal-type predicate modifiers (like should, can) than the narratives, which have relatively more aspectual verbs (like start, keep on). Where modal expressions do occur in narratives, they are typically agent-directed (Reilly et al. 2002.) The ideas presented in 2.2, concerning a CLINE or continuum of rhetorical means for moving from the personal to the general, from concrete to abstract, from specific to general, from immediate to distanced, from involved to detached, thus seem to provide a useful starting point for examining our proposed characterization of discourse stance. Relevant linguistic
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distinctions are as shown in Table 1, along the dimensions of word-internal morphology, lexicon, syntax, and semantic content: The way and the extent in which the devices in Table 1 are deployed will vary across a number of dimensions: text type or genre e.g. a personal narrative vs. fictive short story and these compared with an academic text, a newspaper report, or a procedural text; modality speech or writing; target-language typology; available structural and rhetorical options; as well as the rhetorical preferences and style of individual speaker-writers. For example, as shown in earlier articles in this volume, use of passives and reliance on pronominal subjects and impersonal constructions interact markedly with whether a language requires a surface subject in simple clauses (a typological property which sets Spanish and Hebrew apart from the other languages in our sample). And while all the languages in our sample have passive constructions which are structurally quite productive, they show different distributional patterns across the texts in the five languages examined for this topic. The listing above demonstrates the multiple levels and types of linguistic devices involved in expressing discourse stance. It also has an advantage over certain prior analyses since it departs from a strictly dichotomous division in favor of a continuum or cline. The way it is presented implies a directionality that is helpful for purposes of analysis, rather than being correct in principle. It should not be taken to mean that the features to the left of the chart are in some sense inferior to, or more juvenile, less developed, or less expressive than those to its right. The claim is, rather, that a maturely expressive and rhetorically proficient text will be weighted to one end of the scale or another in keeping with (a) the particular context of discourse and (b) the communicative goals of speaker/writers on a given occasion. In fact, a hallmark of skilfully proficient speaker/writers is that they use a wide range of these different devices in conjunction, and that they do so flexibly, appropriately, and without putting the consistency of the text at risk. The listing above is lacking in another important respect. It focuses on grammatically and semantically definable categories, and so disregards RHETORICAL FEATURES of texts that are crucial to expression of discourse stance. Foremost among these are the domains of DIRECT VS.
REPORTED SPEECH
and the use of DISCOURSE MARKERS, two topics that have figured widely
and controversially -- in the literature.6 But even if we consider only the dimensions in the above list, every single utterance expresses some type of discourse stance or another, so that in general it might not be possible to refer to such a notion as a neutral or default stance.
4. Selected illustrations Unlike the other contributions to this volume, the text excerpts discussed in this section do not provide a survey of the domain under investigation deriving from analysis of our database. Rather, these excerpts are intended to illustrate the problems facing any attempt to operationalize these notions, however intuitively satisfying they may be, and to demonstrate the insights that a data-base like ours affords for tackling such problems. The first few examples are excerpts that illustrate some of the linguistic options used by speakers and writers of different ages in different genres.7 The excerpts are taken from texts that vary in Age, Genre, and Modality; and they differ along the three dimensions of orientation, attitude, and generality. The first excerpt gives the first seventeen clauses of a total 68 in the personal experience account told by an American high school student, a boy 17 years old.8
(1)
Uh, I guess the first one that comes to mind, since we were talking about my dad, I went to middle school in La Jolla, and one of the kids in my classes, it turns out his dad was my dads boss not directly, but his dad was an executive VP of the company, and my dad was one of the guys that actually works in the lab, and so he was always, I dunno, just bugging me, saying, you know, if you mess with me, my dad can have your dad fired and all this stuff [Eh02mnsb]
The first part of ex. 1 appears totally personalized, immediate, and involved. But closer inspection of our three dimensions show that it intersperses features of more than a single discourse stance. In ORIENTATION, it is predominantly sender-based, focusing on the speaker as protagonist (e.g. I went, my classes, my dad) in relation to his classmate as antagonist (one of the
kids in my class, his dad / my dad), including also cognitively focused attitudinal statements in the form of discourse marking expressions like I guess at the introduction to his story and I dunno before introducing its high point. This orientation is shifted via direct speech to protagonist other perspective (if you mess with me, my dad / your dad). It also introduces a receiver orientation in the introductory segment (we were talking about ) and in the formulaic discourse marker you know. In fact, the narrator starts out with reference to the text as an object of reflection, the story as a product of the speakers activity in a way not found among the younger children (the first one that comes to mind). In ATTITUDE, too, although the text is generally in realis mode, reporting on past events, one of these reports includes reference to hypothetical states of affairs (it turns out that, if you mess with me, my dad can have your dad fired). On the dimension of GENERALITY, the entire excerpt is highly specific, in reference to people and places, the only exception being the vague general term and all this stuff. The bulk of this text falls solidly to the left of the list of forms in Table 1, with constant use of 1st person, most clauses in past tense, all active voice, mainly singular number (pseudoexceptions are one of the kids in my class, one of the guys that actually works in the lab), concrete nouns, and dynamic action predicates. But as the preceding analysis indicates, these are general trends. In fact the text shifts stance back and forth from speaker to text to hearer, from statements of fact to hypothetical attitudes, and from specific to general. This interspersal of elements reflecting different types of stance is rare in the texts of younger children, as shown by the full text of a story told by a 4th grade girl on the same topic.
(2) I think I like pushed her [= the narrators sister] because of something, and then I ran away and she was chasing me and then she and then I hid be I um went down and then she kicked me in the mouth. And and my mom told us to like stop and then she made us go to our rooms. I think it was like ten minutes or five, and then um we came out, and we had to say sorry, so we did. And thats it. [Eg04mnsa]
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This text adopts a monolithic discourse stance. It centers around the speaker as protagonist and the other as antagonist, the predicates are all in past tense and highly dynamic, with no expression of prepositional attitudes. The text is thus entirely sender-oriented, without direct reference to the recipient, let alone to the text or the act of text construction as such. It is largely specific and deictic in reference (I, she, we, us, my mom; the mouth, our room) and factual in attitude, reporting on events without commenting on them. The most notable departures from a speaker-oriented, highly specific, concretely personalized discourse stance are her use of the expression I think at the beginning of the story and then again before the segment that marks its resolution. This is textually inappropriate, since I think and its counterparts in other languages (e.g., French je trouve, Spanish creo, Hebrew ani xoev(et) are typically confined to expository discourse among older subjects. The only expression of a propositional attitude in this text is reference to being obliged to perform the speech act of apologizing (We had to say sorry). The other departure from this monolithic discourse stance is represented in vaguely general references to causal (I pushed her because of something) and temporal circumstances (it was like ten minutes or five [sic]). Here again, more maturely proficient story-tellers would probably have described these circumstances in quite specific terms. This suggests that even in the context of oral narratives, which both this project and a range of other research have shown to be structurally well mastered by age 9 years (Peterson & McCabe 1983, Berman & Slobin 1994, Hickmann 1995), the younger subjects in our sample may not manifest the cognitive flexibility and rhetorical skill necessary to alternate discourse stance in a well-motivated and clearly formulated fashion. This type of text is not an isolated instance. It closely corresponds to the oral expository text of another 4th-grade English-speaking boy.
(3) I think, I think people should just try to um work stuff out and not just fight about it and just go to someone thats more intelligent pretty much and kind of wiser older than you probably and see how that works out . And you should try to be nice to everyone even if you dont like like that person. [Eg05mes]
The discourse stance expressed here is also monolithic, but in reverse. The text is generalized and non-specific in reference; except for the discourse-marking I think at the outset, its referents are all generic (people, someone, everyone, that person; you). It is prescriptively deontic in attitude, reflected in the fact that every single predicate is either modified by the modal should or else is in imperative mood. As a result, the entire text is couched in an even more general irrealis mood than would be the case with generalizations formulated in the timeless present tense. And the text lacks a clearly centered orientation, whether to speaker, sender, or text. This does not mean that children of this age are either cognitively or linguistically incapable of adopting a different stance within a given text. But such alternations are far less common in their expository than in their personal experience narratives, where they are far more proficient than in constructing expository texts (Berman 2001b). This is shown by the ending of the narrative text from another 4th-grade English-speaking boy. He ends his narrative (the last 7 out of 21 clauses), about a time when he was playing golf and he got mad and hit at the door of his house with a golf club, as follows.
(4) And my mom was home, and then I had to go in. And then maybe today or during the weekend or last weekend me and my dad got [sic] that stuff, where if you have dents on the car you fill it in. And we got that, and we did that. And this weekend were maybe going to paint over it [Eg14mns]
This 9-year-old describes the resolution to his narrative by a generalized statement in conditional mood, with generic reference and in the timeless present tense (if you have dents ...), and he concludes it by referring to another contingency, a possible event in the future (maybe were going to). This contrasts markedly with the speaker-centered description of a highly specific series of events that make up the bulk of the 21 clauses in this oral narrative. Note, further, that the concluding clause is not really a generalized coda that relate story-time to storytelling time in a fully generalized proposition, since the final statement is still specific and personal in
reference. This type of ending is typically juvenile and supports the observation by Tolchinsky et al. 2002 concerning the lack of generalized narrative codas, particularly among the younger subjects. As is to be expected, these texts differ markedly from those of high school adolescents and even more so in the case of adults. This is shown by the following oral narrative of an Englishspeaking highschool boy in ex. 5. Items marked in italics represent elements which make nonspecific reference of a kind not typically identified with personal experience narrative type discourse. The text is segmented into paragraph-like narrative segments (setting, episodes etc.), for ease of reading.
(5) When I was I was in fifth grade, I finally stood up to someone in class that had that had been bothering me for quite a while. And ever since kindergarten he had been a person who was who was popular in the class, not because um not because he was someone that everyone loved or really admired, it was because, it was more like because they were afraid of him and they thought that if they they joined his pack, then it would be um safer for them. And um he had made life really and the school year without fun for a number years for a lot of people, and finally in in second grade I, no it was fifth grade, he finally went so far that I actually I actually acted against him. I would have I would have just ignored it as as being something that had been going on for a while, something that you know his nature. And then um then he just he just interrupted a conversation that I was having with someone and he told me to shut up and he pushed me and and I just and I just pushed him back, you know because just to show him I wasnt going to take that because it was my it was my conversation and and he was he was almost like an uninvited person intruding into it. And um he didnt want to take that either, so he kicked me and I returned that to reinforce what I was trying to say before. And um thats basically the end of it. He through through physical action, he learned what what he couldnt have learned through um speaking and compromising. And I know
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thats thats what people always say is the key to solving conflicts, but theres certain occasions where that doesnt work, I think. Thats it. [Eh08mns]
As shown by the underlined items, this account of a personal experience is sprinkled liberally with quantifiers such as indefinite pronouns and non-specific lexical NPs. This is reinforced by reference to non-agentive, generalized abstract nominals of the kind discussed by Reilly et al. 2002 (e.g. physical action, speaking, compromising, conflicts, occasions) in the concluding part of the story. These combine with numerous other items of the kind listed to the right end of Table 1, to demonstrate how far this account deviates from a canonically personalized or involved narrative stance. Its orientation shifts from the very beginning from being centered on the speaker (who figures as the key protagonist only in the middle parts of the narrative) to descriptive evaluation of the 3rd person other as antagonist. And where attitudes are expressed, these tend to be epistemic rather than deontic in character, referring to contingent possibilities (what he couldnt have learned ) or reflecting on the evidence for states of affairs (I know thats what people always say but theres certain occasions where ) An even more complex and varied representation of discourse stance is illustrated by the opening parts of the expository texts produced orally by three English-speaking adults in 6ac. 9
(6) a. Okay, um let me think for a few minutes. Well, Ive never been one to ah, Ive never been good at confrontation and er conflicts make me very uneasy very uncomfortable, so I try to avoid them at any cost. And as a young girl sometimes I would find myself being taken advantage of, so as an adult I have learned that one needs to stand up for their boundaries and they need not, they should not let take people, its in their best interest not to let people take advantage of them. So when confrontations arise between people and problems between people, the first thing that I try to do is I try to look at my part in that confrontation and what did I do to cause this person to react in the way that they reacted. What was my part? Because I feel
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that everything is fifty-fifty, unless somebodys just totally off their rocker and you know and you know emotionally unstable. So my first uh approach to a conflict in a situation is to see [Ea03fes] b. Okay, well I think that when you are talking about conflict, as with the story I just told you, um sometimes you have verbal conflict, sometimes you have silent conflict, sometimes you have written conflict, so the way you should address it is going to vary. Um, speaking from experience, theres a lot of times where there is conflict and I think it is in the best interest of the relationship of two people maybe to let something lie if it can be resolved on your own. However there are other occasions where the subject of the conflict is very serious and it needs to be addressed. Um if there are things going on where someones safety someones wellbeing is endangered, then it must be addressed. Um in other situations it might be more trivial, and it might cause a dangerous conflict if it is addressed. So I think that each conflict needs to be considered differently and the ways that you resolve it need to be need to be considered separately as well. [Ea04fes] c. I more or less wrote that whether its between adults or adults and children that there ought to be some understanding to the stem the disagreement and that in the case of adults they can or at least ought to be able to reason with one another, each finding out what the other wants, and and then sort of you know making concessions to avoid conflict altogether. And in the case of children, while it might not be as easy to reason and may require some more discipline, then then at least the adult should act in the childs best interest and try to get what he wants or she wants from the child by making the boy or girl understand why its necessary, rather than using some kind of you know threat of punishment or bribery. But essentially it would probably be best to and possible to avoid it altogether if people came to an understanding ahead of time. [Ea07mes]
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These opening excerpts from three adult texts which are similar to ones found in other languages, but NOT in the other age groups in our study illustrate a maturely proficient ability to vary discourse stance in the on-going course of text production. They illustrate not only the interaction of different linguistic features in expressing discourse stance, but also the fact that choice of a particular form of expression is in each case optional, and could have been alternated to modify the stance expressed slightly, without affecting the semantic or referential content of the statements being made. These different features include nominal reference, particularly but not only of grammatical subjects (as noted in Ravid et al. 2002) and of verb tense, mood, and modality (as in Ragnarsdttir et al. 2002, Reilly et al. 2002). The three texts differ in basic orientation: Ex. 6a remains sender/speaker-oriented. Ex. 6b starts out that way, then shifts to a more general, hence more distanced perspective on the topic. Ex. 6c refers to self only in relation to the text that the individual wrote on the same topic, and then moves to a totally other orientation. These multiply varied types of stance rely on a skillful interplay of different degrees of specificity vs. generality of reference (from I, me, my to generic adults, people, children, occasions, via impersonal it, there and on to abstract nominalizations such as conflict, disagreement, punishment). Downgrading of agency is further effected by use of passive voice. These factors combine with propositional attitudes that range from expression of hypothetical contingencies and use of irrealis mood (when confrontations arise ; you should address it ; whether its between adults or adults and children). They involve a combination of sender-centered, recipient-centered, and text-centered orientations to the abstract topic of discussion. These different levels and types of SHIFT in discourse stance within and most particularly across different segments of discourse, in the course of on-going text production highlight several more general themes that emerge from our study. They reflect a mature ability to organize the online flow of information from a global, top-down perspective, even in the spoken medium and even in the less easily accessible expository context of discourse; this echoes the findings for text openings and closing by Tolchinsky et al 2002. The shifts in 6ac reflect differences in choice of individual rhetorical style that we find far more in maturely proficient text construction, but rarely among school-age children (Berman 1988,
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 1+
2001a). They most markedly reflect a cognitive ability to adopt multiple perspectives on an issue; we find this typically among the older subjects in our study (as noted with respect to written texts by Reilly et al. 2002). The last two examples we consider reflect the two extremes in types of texts elicited in the larger study: ex. 7, an oral narrative, and ex. 8, a written expository text, both produced by an English-speaking man majoring in the sciences at graduate school. Items underlined indicate communicative, interactive discourse items of the kind termed markers of collateral discourse by Clark 1996.
(7)
Okay I dont know why Ill bring this up. But but just to okay just to say something. Uh I had a friend in high school, and he uh he was a pretty good friend, but we kind of uh there were some things about him I didnt really like because uh he was kind of, he had an evil side to him. Like he used to, he used to like catch squirrels and kind of torture them or shoot birds and things like this. And then uh when we got a little older you know he was very competitive. Like if I said I liked one girl, then hed go and ask her out or you know hed chase after my girlfriend. So I guess that was a problem, because because I was good friends with him, but at the same time he had this like a dark side or something that you know I always knew was there. And uh anyway we kind of fell you know lost touch after high school. But that I dont know why that came to mind. I mean we we always had a we never really had a conflict, you know we were always friends, but there was always this you know underlying how he felt about me. If there was something about me that he was kind of or if he was just generally competitive or you know. But it was kind of weird just to have a friend who you kind of have this Maybe a lot of friendships are like that with a underlying I mean I dont know why that came to mind. [Ea01mns]
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 1,
(8)
Conflicts and problems between people are often avoidable I believe, and yet they seem to occupy a considerable amount of our time and energy, based on conversations I have overheard in places like coffee shops. I think people should take a moment and think .about why the problem is occurring before taking on an automatic adversary role. If people with a conflict or problem would try and consider the other persons point of view perspective and reason for being at the opposite side of the problem as them, then maybe a resolution to the problem could be easily reached. It would not only help solve the problem, it might help straighten out the other person of some deeper conflict and in half the cases even the person .who is addressing the other side. Of course not all problems can be dealt with in this way. The world is not a perfect place. In these cases it is better to avoid the situation and minimize the problem even to the point where it just fades away I believe. Problems, however, are meant to be solved, and doing so is one of the challenges and joys of interactions with other people. Being social is about cooperating, and solving the problems we have with each other is what makes a society work. [Ea01mns]
Ex. 7 contains nearly one interactive type of discourse marker in every clause, as shown by the underlined items.10 These are almost entirely absent from the essay written by the same man about a problem of social relevance in ex. 8. This reflects a major distinguishing feature of spoken vs. written texts in our data base from 4th grade on. The three instances of such expressions in the essay are never of an interactive or communicative form of collateral lexical elements like okay, just, kinda, like, as they are in the oral narrative. In contrast, the expressions I think, I believe in the expository essay serve as SEGMENTATION markers, indicating that the writer has finished a unit of discourse, or is about to begin a new one (Cahana-Amitay & Katzenberger, to appear). Both texts from this man reflect the varied nature of discourse stance in a given piece of discourse. The personal experience narrative contains several text-oriented comments (Ill bring
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. %0
this up; okay, just to say something; I dont know why that came to mind), both in the middle of the narration and at its conclusion.11 There are numerous expressions of propositionally modalized attitudes, particularly in the distancing effect achieved by attitudinal statements. There are many instances of non-specific quantifiers and generalizations (there were some things about him I just didnt like; we were always friends but there was always this underlying ; if he was just generally competitive); these are interspersed between the specific incidents related between the protagonist rival. This feature is most marked just before the coda (which itself combines a speaker-orientation with a text-based comment I mean I dont know why that came to mind), in the form of a classic type of evaluating comment, generalizing and summing up the entire narrative: maybe a lot of friendships are like that. The expository essay of ex. 8 is largely text-oriented; it relies heavily on reference to general states of affairs and entities like conflicts and problems, adversary role, a resolution to the problem (non-specific), the world, the situation, challenges, joys, interactions, a society. But interspersed with these generalities are use of 1st person reference, both generic (a considerable amount of our time and energy) and deictic, the latter anchored in personal but generalized experience (conversations I have overheard in places like coffee shops). What most distinguishes ex. 8 in terms of stance, as distinct from thematic content and level of language use, is that it is almost totally cognitive and epistemic in attitude, as expressed in such terms as it seems; people should take a moment; if people would try then maybe a resolution could be reached; it would not only help ; it might help, it is better to avoid. This stance, too, is changed in the coda, in the form of a totally definite statement which, while generalized, is not modally modified in any way: Being social is about cooperating and solving is what makes society work. The question remains as to how these, and other features that play a role in discourse stance, can be operationalized by means of analytical procedures that can be reliably applied across different text types, and perhaps even quantified (some such proposals are noted in 6 below). This is difficult in principle as well as practice, because the functional notion of discourse stance is so complex and multifaceted (2) and because such a varied range of linguistic forms and subsystems are involved in its expression (3). Another major problem which, to the best of
our knowledge, has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature is the confounding of variables between Genre (personal experience narratives vs. expository discussions) and Modality (spoken vs. written language), which are clearly demonstrated in exx 78, produced by the same person on the same day.
5. Predictions The preliminary, partial analyses provided in the preceding section combine on one hand, with the conceptual and linguistic framework we have proposed for analysing discourse stance, and on the other hand, with the findings of the cross-linguistic analyses of different topics presented in the preceding articles in this collection to yield the following predictions.
5.1 Forms of linguistic expression: A confluence of cues We assume that distinctions in discourse stance along the three dimensions we have specified will find expression in a range of different linguistic forms, representing linguistic subsystems which, in linguistic and even in discourse analysis, are often considered in isolation (see Berman & Verhoeven 2002, 2.3). That is, various formal devices including type of surface subject, personal vs. impersonal pronouns, clause constructions, voice, and mode will interact in expressing discourse stance, and in shifting from one stance to another in the course of a given text. Some of these issues have been demonstrated for the different variables in our study Language, Age, Genre (type of text), and Modality (spoken vs. written) in earlier analyses presented in the working papers of our project (e.g. Berman 1999, Berman & Sandbank 2000; Jisa & Vigui 1999, 2000, Reilly et al. 2000, Tolchinsky et al 2000a). Others are reflected in the findings for different topics in the articles that constitute the present collection.
5.2 Development of intratextual diversity: From dichotomy to divergence A bias towards sender-orientation, affective attitudes, and specific reference will typify the narrative texts of the younger children, as compared with an almost entirely generalized stance and deontic atttitudes in their expository texts. With age, we predict an intermixing of different
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. %%
orientations, attitudes, and levels of specificity of reference within a single text. Adults, in particular, may adopt a personal orientation in part of their expository texts, and express textoriented cognitive attitudes in their narratives. Earlier analyses of our database (published in our working papers vols. I (Aisenman 1999a) and III [Tolchinsky et al 2000b] in a range of domains, including temporality marking and thematic content of the texts in our sample, have led us to the developmental and genre-sensitive hypothesis of growing divergence from the canonic as a function of increased maturity and improved abilities for text construction (see Berman & Verhoeven 2002, 3.2). We suggest that, with age, personal-experience narratives come to include more evaluative or non-narrative elements and so incorporate a discourse stance that expresses a text-focused orientation, epistemic attitudes, and generalized reference. Conversely, the more mature expository texts will include personalized receiver- and/or senderoriented comments; they may express deontic judgements and affective attitudes; and they will be less vaguely general, with specific illustrations of their generalized propositional content.
5.3. Development of rhetorical consistency: Mixing of stance A related developmental prediction is that, when younger subjects do intersperse distanced generalizations in their narratives, as well as personalized elements in their expository texts, they may do so in ways that are rhetorically inconsistent or communicatively inappropriate. They may also fail to mark these shifts in discourse stance by appropriately explicit linguistic means, a hallmark of maturely proficient text construction (Berman 2001b).
5.4 Orientation: From sender/receiver communicative stance to text-internal autonomy We expect even the youngest children in our sample to rely on both specific and generic means of reference, and to adopt both personal and generalized stances. However, a (meta)textual orientation will be found mainly among older speaker/writers, as indicated clearly by analyses of opening and closing segments of text in Tolchinsky et al. 2002, because of factors of general socio-cognitive development (see 5.7 below).
5.5 Attitudes Analysis of propositional attitudes in the expository texts of younger children, as compared with older speaker/writers, reveals a shift from affective to deontic to epistemic attitudes. This can be related to quite general socio-cognitive developmental trends from highly subjective, personalized attitudes, to more socially conditioned views, and eventually to abstract, distanced, and universalistic views on given states of affairs. Interestingly, just this development is revealed by the thematic content of evaluative elements in personal-experience recollections of the same event: the Gulf War of 1990, as related by Israeli pre-adolescents, adolescents, and adults (Segal 2001). The study revealed that the youngest age-group evaluated the events they reported in subjectively emotional terms of how they felt on the occasion; the adolescents made socially oriented commentary about the behavior of other people with whom they were involved in the situation; and the adults gave cognitive evaluations of the situation in terms of general principles and consequences. As noted by Reilly et al. 2002, this is highly consistent with Piagetian and neo-Piagetian analyses of levels of socio-cognitive and moral development (e.g. Hersh et al. 1979, Selman 1980). However, in line with the prediction in 5.2, this does not imply any monolithic development or clearcut dichotomy of academic-cognitive attitudes, on the one hand, vs. social-communicative attitudes on the other. Clearly, mature speaker/writers can adopt multiple stances on a given event or state of affairs, and they can integrate abstract propositional theorizing on a topic with their personal social values, in keeping with different communicative contexts.
5.6 Generality of reference This may be an area where cross-linguistic differences and the impact of Language typology are particularly marked. For example, as demonstrated in earlier articles in this collection, the linguistic expression of an impersonal stance interacts with whether the language requires overt subjects (cf. French on, Swedish man), or whether it has strongly grammaticized word order constraints as compared with the strictly subjectless se marked impersonals in Spanish, and constructions with 3pl. masculine verbs in Hebrew (Thompson 1979,
Berman 1980). In English particularly, speakers (possibly to a greater extent than writers) make use of a very mixed range of indeterminate pronouns (as illustrated by exx. 57 above).
5.7 Cross-modal distinctions: Discourse stance in spoken vs. written language Differences between spoken face-to-face interaction and writing can be characterized in terms of several factors, including the duration of the physical signal; the possibility of on-line feedback and mutual adaptation between sender and receiver, and the distribution of expressive features words, tone of voice, gestures, facial expression etc. across a given piece of discourse (Strmqvist et al. 1999). All these features have consequences for the construction of stance. The fact that the signal is long-lasting in writing (whereas it is of very short duration in speech) allows for a greater ease of metalinguistic reflection and for more long-distance editing in the written medium. With respect to stance, writing is thus more conducive to text orientation, especially of a metalinguistic kind. Further, the possibility of on-line feedback and mutual adaptation between sender and receiver in spoken interaction will tend to promote a greater degree of recipient orientation than is the case in writing. The speaker is eager to elicit feedback from the recipient with respect to uptake, understanding, and attitudinal reactions (Allwood et al. 1992). In terms of Attitude, the simultaneous participation of tone of voice, gestures, and facial expression in speaking is conducive to more affective attitudes in speech than in writing where the expression of affect needs to find a predominantly linear, lexico-syntactic distribution. Further, the epistemic terms used in speaking tend to assume a time- and turn-saving quality, because of the high time pressure and reduced room for planning that are typical of speech (I suppose it could ...; I mean ...; not quite X, but rather Y.) In writing, epistemic terms can readily be stripped of this particular quality. A similar argument could be made with respect to quantifiers and the dimension of generality: Cognitively demanding quantification and generalization can be expected to be commoner in writing than in speech. Many instances of generalization in speech, e.g. In many cases ... or Most people would agree that ..., may not be
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. %'
the outcome of careful quantification, but may rather be motivated by time and turn-taking considerations.
5.8 Cross-linguistic contrasts As noted with respect to the predictions in 5.17, cross-linguistic differences will emerge in choice of particular devices for expressing the three dimensions of discourse stance that we have identified. These will depend on the repertoire of structural and lexical devices available in a given language. For example, English (unlike French, Spanish, or Hebrew) affords a regular alternation of grammaticized modals like can, must, should vs. more periphrastic semimodals like be able to, have to, ought to, respectively, for the expression of prepositional attitudes. Spanish and Hebrew have highly productive, morphologically marked middle-voice constructions for downgrading of agency, and thus for expressing a less personal stance, but English makes restricted use of such constructions, realized mainly in shifts of syntactic valence. As this suggests, the range of devices available to speaker/writers will interact with quite general typological features of different target languages, as well as with rhetorical preferences of the kind noted for picture-book narrations in Berman & Slobin (1994:61141) and in the study of passive constructions by Jisa et al. 2002. 5.9 Shared developmental trends -n t.e ot.er .and, t.e general de$elopmental trends /or discourse stance predicted in t.e preceding sections -- /or orientation and attitude as 0ell as /or t.e de$elopment /rom dic.otomous intra-genre distinctions at 1ounger ages compared 0it. t.e di$ersit1 and r.etorical /le2i3ilit1 mani/ested 31 mature spea4er-0riters 0it.in t.e same te2t -- are not e2pected to di//er mar4edl1 as a /unction o/ target language. 5.is is 3ecause 0e assume t.at t.e de$elopment o/ discourse stance, as 0e de/ine it .ere, in$ol$ing multi/aceted relations 3et0een spea4er/0riter, te2t, and recei$er, is related to more general patterns o/ cogniti$e, socio-cogniti$e, and metacogniti$e de$elopment. 5.e domain o/ discourse stance is t.us e2pected to re/lect 3roader
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. %)
de$elopments in ad$anced cognition, as re$ealed 31 con$erging e$idence /rom studies across $aried populations and domains underta4en /rom $er1 di//erent perspecti$es. 6.ile not 0is.ing to ma4e claims /or uni$ersalit1 or identical rates o/ de$elopment, sc.olars #uite generall1 agree on t.e e2istence o/ important de$elopments starting in middle c.ild.ood and continuing into adult.ood. 5.e most radical o/ t.ese is t.e s.i/t /rom concrete/p.1sical to a general potential /or a3stract//ormal reasoning t.at emerges around 11-1% 1ears o/ age in multiple domains and proceeds on into adult.ood (7os.man 1,,+(. 6it. t.e ad$ent o/ /ormal t.oug.t, t.ere is a gradual re$ersal o/ t.e direction o/ t.in4ing 3et0een realit1 and possi3ilit1 in t.e su38ect9s met.od o/ approac.. :ossi3ilit1 no longer appears merel1 as an e2tension o/ an empirical situation, 3ut instead realit1 is no0 secondar1 to possi3ilit1 (e.g. :iaget 1,%4/1,*%(. 7os.man (1,,+( argues t.at ;t.e central locus o/ de$elopmental c.ange in cognition 3e1ond c.ild.ood is in reasoning < t.at is, in t.e deli3erate application o/ epistemic constraints to one9s o0n t.in4ing= (p. ,4*(, 0.ile ot.er studies, too, indicate t.at genuinel1 ne0 metacogniti$e s4ills appear in middle c.ild.ood and /louris. in adolescence (in addition to 7os.man 1,,+, see, /or e2ample, >la$ell, 7iller 7iller 1,,3(. ?ncreased in/ormation
processing capacit1, automaticit1, and /amiliarit1 0it. a 0ider range o/ content 4no0ledge (@ase 1,+'(, reduces t.e load on t.e cogniti$e s1stem, and ena3les adolescents and adults to /ocus on .ig.er-order processes suc. as planning, organiAing, monitoring, and e$aluating, 0.ile .olding in mind se$eral di//erent dimensions o/ a topic or a pro3lem in situations 0.ere 1ounger c.ildren are more li4el1 to 3e /ocus on a single issue or idea (Beating 1,,0(. Anot.er /inding /rom de$elopmental ps1c.olog1 o/ rele$ance to t.e present stud1 is t.e e2istence o/ a genuine de$elopmental progression in conceptual domains t.at are closel1 related to t.e tas4 /aced 31 our su38ectsC t.ese include perspecti$e-ta4ing a3ilities (!elman 1,+0C Duruc.arri !elman 1,+%( and moral reasoning (Bo.l3erg 1,+4(. 5.us, similar se#uences and
order o/ de$elopmental le$els or p.ases .a$e 3een o3ser$ed in a numerous studies across t.ese and related domains, alt.oug. 0it. some $ariation in rate. !elman Bo.l3erg, /or e2ample,
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. %*
descri3e se$eral de$elopmental le$els t.at re/lect an age-related c.ange in /ocus /rom t.e o3ser$a3le/p.1sical to t.e a3stract//ormal and an increasing capacit1 to di//erentiate and coordinate an increasing num3er o/ perspecti$es at an increasing distance /rom oneEs o0n point o/ re/erence or deictic center. @.ildren progress /rom egocentered 3eings 0.o ma1 3e una0are o/ an1 perspecti$e ot.er t.an t.eir o0n (!tage 0, or presc.ool c.ildren, in !elmanEs model( to sop.isticated social-cogniti$e t.eorists 0.o can 4eep se$eral perspecti$es in mind, and compare eac. o/ t.em to t.eir o0n as 0ell as to t.e $ie0 t.at ;most peopleF 0ould adopt (stage 4, late adolescence and adult.ood(. 5.e gradesc.ool c.ildren and t.e 3ul4 o/ t.e 8unior .ig. sc.ool students in our samples are li4el1 to 3e at !elman9s le$el %. @.ildren at t.is le$el easil1 di//erentiate 3et0een t.eir o0n and t.e ot.er9s perspecti$e, and t.e1 0ill adopt one or t.e ot.er o/ t.ese, 3ut t.e1 are as 1et una3le to coordinate di//erent perspecti$es concurrentl1. 5.e parallel stage in Bo.l3erg9s t.eor1 is t.at o/ precon$entional moralit1 (le$el %( 0.ere sel/-interest (or concern /or t.e interest o/ one protagonist( determines t.e moral $alue o/ an action. At !elman9s le$el 3, starting in preadolescence, t.e indi$idual is a3le to =step outside= a social interaction, to assume a t.ird-person point o/ $ie0, and to e$aluate and coordinate t.e perspecti$es o/ di//erent participants in a situation. At t.is p.ase o/ de$elopment, 1oung people can readil1 adopt t.e perspecti$e o/ t.e group to 0.ic. t.e1 3elongsG /amil1, /riends, and peers. 7oral reasoning is in t.e con$entional stage, 0.ere social appro$al guides reasoning a3out 8ustice and actions, 3ut as 1et 0it.out an1 e2pression o/ generaliAed principles or $alues. 5.is le$el is not /irml1 esta3lis.ed until age 1'-1) (6al4er et al, 1,+*(, t.e age o/ our t.e .ig. sc.ool su38ects in our stud1. At !elman9s le$el 4, 3eginning in adolescence, t.e indi$idual ta4es a perspecti$e outside o/ sel/ and immediate group, as noted a3o$e. 7orall1, t.is is t.e stage o/ la0 and order (Bo.l3erg9s le$el 4(. Hater still, at Bo.l3erg9s post-con$entional stage ', t.e indi$idual ta4es into consideration t.e relati$it1 o/ la0s, rules and $alues, and uni$ersal et.ical principles. 6it.out 0is.ing to impl1 an1 4ind o/ one-to-one relations.ip 3et0een discourse stance and cogniti$e de$elopment, 0e /eel sa/e in predicting t.at t.e de$elopment o/ discourse stance
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. %+
0ill re/lect t.e cogniti$e, socio-cogniti$e, and meta-cogniti$e patterns outlined a3o$e. 5.e t0o 1ounger age-groups are li4el1 to 3e predominantl1 at !elman9s stages %, and Bo.l3erg9s precon$entional stage o/ moral reasoning, 0.ereas t.e .ig.sc.ool adolescents 0ill 3e predominantl1 at stage 3 in !elman9s and Bo.l3erg9s t.eories, and t.e adults 0ill .a$e reac.ed stages 4 and '. !ender and recei$er orientations in our c.aracteriAation o/ discourse stance 0ill t.us 3e easil1 accessi3le /or e$en our 1oungest su38ects. ?n contrast, distancing t.e spea4er/0riter and adopting an autonomous te2t-orientation seems to re#uire (as a necessar1 alt.oug. not su//icient condition( a socio-cogniti$e and meta-cogniti$e le$el ac.ie$ed onl1 31 t.e .ig.-sc.ool students and adults in our sample. !imilarl1, a//ecti$e and deontic attitudes closel1 correspond to t.e socio-moral le$els li4el1 to predominate in t.e t0o 1ounger age groups, 0.ereas epistemic attitudes 0ill gain ground among adolescents and adults. 6e e2pect t.e 1ounger su38ects in our sample to adopt a discourse stance t.at encompasses a rat.er narro0 range o/ perspecti$es, one t.at is close to t.eir o0n. Ad$anced (/ormal( cognition, .ig.er order meta-cogniti$e s4ills, and relati$istic socio-moral reasoning are e$identl1 necessar1 components o/ multi/old perspecti$eta4ing and t.e r.etoricall1 di$erse and /le2i3le discourse stance adopted 31 t.e more mature .ig. sc.ool students and adult spea4ers/0riters in our sample < as re/lected in t.e sample te2ts in e22. ) t.roug. + o/ 4 a3o$e.
6. Tentative conclusions and desiderata In addition to the convergent impact of a range of linguistic forms from different subsystems verb tense and verb semantics, transitivity and voice, as well as nominal reference and determiners the view presented here illustrates a key facet of human discourse in general, and of discourse stance in particular. There is no one way of talking or writing about a given topic, or even about the same state of affairs in the external world. As is shown clearly by Jisa et al. 2002, speakers and writers have RHETORICAL OPTIONS in the perspectives they adopt towards a given situation not only in WHAT they choose to say or write about something, but also in
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. %,
HOW
they choose to word this content. This ties in with another general motif of the analyses in
this collection: Concern with form/function relations, and with how linguistic devices are used to meet specific discourse functions, must take into account the facts that a given linguistic form can meet a RANGE of functions (e.g., the pronoun you is used for specific deictic reference, or impersonally for generic reference), and that a particular discourse function in our case, the notion of discourse stance can be met by a variety of forms. In developmental perspective, prior work on linguistic and narrative development has shown that, with Age, the range of forms used for any function, as well as the range of functions met by any given form, expand and become increasingly flexible across time. Furthermore, he present study shows that, with increased maturity and higher levels of literacy, the expression of linguistic form/discourse function relations becomes not only more elaborate, but also more consistent and more appropriate to a specific communicative setting. We hypothesized that discourse stance would be critically affected by an intersection of Genre and Modality. That is, oral personal-experience narratives could be expected to express a more communicatively sender/receiver orientation, more affective attitudes, and more personalized specific reference in contrast to written, topic-based expositions, which would tend to be more text-based in orientation, more cognitively epistemic in attitude, and more general in reference. The earlier articles in this collection demonstrate that, across the languages in our sample, even the youngest children (910 year old grade-schoolers) distinguish clearly between narrative and expository Genre in both linguistic usage and thematic content. We now feel confident in concluding that they do so in the expression of discourse stance as well; however, the tenor of their texts is less varied in two senses. They use a restricted range of linguistic means to express the particular perspective they adopt, with respect to the events they are describing or the topic they are discussing; and they tend to make a rigidly dichotomous distinction between narratives and expository texts. However, with development and increased experience with different types of text production, the interaction between Age, Genre, and Modality reveals a less straightforward patterning. In terms of discourse stance, the personalexperience narratives of the younger children are highly communicatively oriented, affective,
and personalized, whereas older speaker/writers introduce a more distanced stance into their personal-experience accounts. These take the form of generalized evaluative commentary on the nature of such situations, interspersed across the narrative texts; these are particularly marked in the introductory setting and the concluding coda segments. In the expository texts, in contrast, we find that a trend which moves from generalities to specifics is embedded in, and elaborates on, the generalized propositions formulated by the older speaker/writers. The expository texts of younger children are almost entirely generalized, and so apparently abstract in nature. They occasionally include hypothetical examples (what happens if/when people do certain things), but they lack specific illustrative examples of relevant incidents in the past.12 Nor do the younger children propose specific, concrete solutions to the problems they were asked to discuss. In marked contrast, high-school students, and even more so university-graduate adults, combine (a) a general, abstractly text-oriented stance with respect to the topic with (b) specific reference to illustrative incidents and concrete proposals for how to tackle the problem and (c) personal commentary on how the situation affects them as individuals. At the same time, the over-all stance which mature speaker writers adopt, both in their narratives and especially in their expository texts, is by and large more distanced, detached, and objective than that of the children. Finally, some comments on desiderata. By laying out issues of principle concerning the notion discourse stance, we hope that we have progressed to a point where it will be feasible to operationalize the multiple factors involved in the topic. Several difficulties have been noted in the course of this paper: the existence of confounding variables, particularly between text types in terms of both Genre and Modality; the problematic interaction of discourse stance with linguistic register in the sense of level of usage (colloquial everyday vs. more formal styles of expression); the need to integrate top-down, macro-level analyses of discourse with bottom-up, micro-level analyses; and the fact that each language not only has its own structurally defined range of expressive options, but also has particular rhetorical preferences. Besides, it is not clear whether one can or should attempt to quantify an issue which is intrinsically qualitative, since it concerns choices which are optionally determined by the subjective motivations of
speaker/writers, on the one hand, and by the intuitive interpretations of hearer/readers (as well as of analysts), on the other.13 A first step might be to examine the entire database in each language in order to define the range of LINGUISTIC FORMS bound morphology, lexical expressions, and syntactic structures and processes that can be alternated across the different dimensions of discourse stance. A next step might be to analyse the clustering of these forms in the functioning of discourse stance, with regard to the boundaries of CLAUSE PACKAGES as the basic units out of which texts are constituted (see Berman & Verhoeven 2002, 1.5). One could also analyze such clusters in relation to discourse SITES e.g. settings; episodes; codas in narratives, introductions, and bodies of text; conclusions in expository texts. Such a strategy has proved extremely effective in the analysis of opening and closing elements by Tolchinsky et al. 2002. Alternatively, one might analyse the functioning of particular LINGUISTIC SUBSYSTEMS N-slot structure and content; Vslot structure and content; active, passive, and middle voice; and modal expressions in terms of the role that they play in the expression of discourse stance. Finally, selected texts in each language might be analysed to establish discourse stance PROFILES in relation to each of the variables of the study: Age, Genre, and Modality. In sum, we believe that the ideas that we have proposed for characterizing discourse stance, together with our tentative suggestions for how to proceed with analysing this domain, as a potential source of reference for future research of our own and others, taking as a starting point the rich and carefully controlled database that this project has made available.
Notes * The authors are grateful to sa Nordqvist (Gteburg University) for her helpful input on relevant studies based on her research on the topic of direct and indirect speech.
1. The term form is used in the sense defined by Berman & Slobin (1994:18) as an umbrella term for a range of grammatical morphemes and construction types, as well as lexical items and expressions.
2. This is a crude generalization of a notion which has been the focus of considerable attention since it was first proposed, including application to non-narrative texts (Giora 1990). The idea of narrative evaluation is reconsidered in a collection devoted to Labovs narrative research (ed. by Bamberg 1997), with a retrospective article by Labov 1997 and some studies with a developmental thrust (including Berman 1997). A pertinent re-evaluation of narrative evaluation, using data similar to that of the present corpus, appears in Aisenman & Assayag 1999.
3. In fact, the concept of stance in the work of Biber, as noted in the introduction, can be seen as an extension of the concept of propositional attitudes. However, where Bibers treatment of stance is confined to the relation between speaker/writers and the content of what they say or write, our concept of the notion aims to integrate the speaker/writers attitude to the FORM of what is said or written vs. the RELATION they express to the hearer/reader addressee.
4. These examples reflect possible cross-linguistic differences in the actual forms used to express these different orientations. For example, 2nd person is used with non-personal, generic reference quite widely in the Dutch and English texts of our sample, as well as in the Spanish and Hebrew texts, particularly in the less formal spoken medium; but this extension from deictic to generic reference is rare in such contexts in Icelandic, and French speaker/writers prefer on or nous.
5. As noted in the introduction to the article on propositional attitudes by Reilly et al. 2002, the notion of affect is not generally included in semantic analyses of modality. However, as suggested in the concluding part of that article, it seems important to introduce this as a distinct aspect of the attitudinal dimension of discourse stance, as a polar contrast to an epistemic stance. Besides, research on narrative development shows that children typically refer to affective or emotional responses to a given situation before they adopt an epistemic stance in relation to mental states (Reilly 1992, Bamberg & Reilly 1996, Segal 2001).
6. For example, regarding direct speech, see Coulmas1986, Caldas-Coulthard 1987, 1994, Nordqvist 2001; on discourse markers, Tannen 1984, 1989, Blakemore 1996, Schiffrin 1987, Clark 1996, Georgakolopolou & Goutsos 1998, Jucker & Ziv 1998; and in developmental perspective, Bereiter, Burtis, & Scardamalia 1988, Pak et al. 1996, Meng & Strmqvist 1999, Katzenberger 2001 (submitted -- using data from our project), and Berman 2001a..
7. For the sake of convenience, the bulk of the examples are from the English-language texts collected in San Diego by Sarah Kriz, Dana Saltzman, and Anita Zamora, under the direction of Judy S. Reilly. Preliminary analyses of other languages in our sample show clearly that the ideas presented are cross-linguistically generalizable, although the specific linguistic devices used in each case will depend on the lexico-grammatical repertoires and the typological properties of the different target languages, as outlined in Aisenman 1999b.
8. For ease of reading, we introduce standard spelling and conventional orthography and punctuation into the transcript versions of these texts, which were segmented into clauses.
9. Examples are all deliberately from spoken language texts, in order to neutralize the effect of Modality (Halliday 1989). . As noted in 5.8, written language will tend to mitigate a recipient orientation; cf. also the discussion by Strmqvist et al. 2002.
10. Earlier analyses suggest that the prevalence of such little words (Pak et al. 1996) differs across individuals, and especially across cultures. They appear to be much commoner in the texts we elicited in Californian English than in Israeli Hebrew and Iberian Spanish; they are even less frequent in French, and rare in Icelandic. Yet across the sample, the general absence of such discourse markers is a critical feature of the written texts compared with the spoken texts, even from the youngest age group.
11. This suggests, as will be noted again in 6, that discourse stance, like all functional elements of text analysis, needs to be related to SITE, i.e. the particular location and function of the segment where an expression of is located in the text setting, episode, high point, coda etc. in narratives; introduction, elaboration, illustration, summary or conclusion in expository texts.
12. Except for references to the contents of the video clips shown at the outset of the elicitation, as noted in the discussion of text boundaries by Tolchinsky et al. 2002.
13. One proposal for quantifying was to define a default profile for a given text type, taking oral narratives and written expository texts as the two extreme cases. Then each text would be evaluated in terms of the number of deviations from the least marked, most canonical forms of expression for that text type. The pitfalls which such a proposal would encounter highlight the intractibility of this problem.
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 3'
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Authors addresses
Ruth A. Berman Dept. of Linguistics Tel Aviv University Ramat Aviv 69978 Israel rberman@post.tau.ac.il
Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdttir Dept. of Psychology Iceland University of Education Stakkahlid 105 Reykjavk, Iceland hragnars@ismennt.is
Sven Strmqvist Dept. of Linguistics Lund University Helgonabacken 12 SE 223 62, Lund, Sweden sven.stromqvist@ling.lu.se
Table 1. The cline of (im)personalization: Distancing devices

MORPHOLOGY: Tense Aspect Mood Person Number Gender LEXICON: Pronouns Verbs Nouns SYNTAX: Subject NP Voice Personal pronouns > Lexical NPs > Active > Middle [= mediopassives] Abstract nominals > Subjectless clauses > Passive Deictic, personal > Indefinite someone > Impersonal you > we > they > one Past Progressive, imperfective Realis 1st/2nd Singular Feminine > > > > > > (General) Present Perfective, telic Irrealis, hypotheticals, contingencies 3rd [personal, anaphoric] Plural Masculine > Neuter > Future
Dynamic, physical > Dynamic abstract > Stative [affective > cognitive] Concrete objects > Events > Abstract properties, states
REFERENTIAL (CONCEPTUAL) CONTENT: Events > Activities [scripts, procedures ] > States [descriptions] > Physical > Perceptual > Ideas
Affective > Cognitive > > > General, universal Abstracted away Generalized (semantic memory)
Specific, immediate, concrete Anchored in time/space Episodic

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Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p.

Discourse stance Ruth Berman,a Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdttir,b and Sven Strmqvistc

Tel Aviv University / bIceland University of Education / cLund University

In press, Written Language and Literacy 5,2 2002. ( R. A. Berman, H. Ragnarsdttir,

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!c.ie//elin, Bam3i. 1,+3. Ac#uiring con$ersational competence. HondonG Began :aul.

Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 40

:a4, 7ariaC !prott, Ric.ardC

Mscalera, Mlena. 1,,). Hittle 0ords, 3ig dealG 5.e de$elopment

Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 41

Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 4%

Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 43

Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 44

Table 1. The cline of (im)personalization: Distancing devices

Specific, immediate, concrete Anchored in time/space Episodic

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